Traditional style tattoo of a black panther head with green eyes above a red rose, with green and red dagger shapes, on an upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Panther and rose on an upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A black panther head with green eyes and a red-tipped nose sits above a large red rose with dark green leaves. Bold black outlines and solid fills define the shapes, with grey shading on the panther's face and the rose's petal folds. Two green and red dagger or arrow shapes rise behind the panther, set against bare skin.

Traditional Upper arm Panther Rose Leaves Dagger Animal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Right, sit down and mind the sawdust, because this is the bit where my father used to spit. The panther came through with the Harrowgate fair in the summer of fifty-three, riding in a crate on the back of a lorry that smelt of diesel and wet hay. Old Mrs Tully said it was a sign. Mr Penhale, who ran the rifle stall, said it was a cat bought off a Welshman for eleven pounds and a bad watch.

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The keeper was a thin lad called Denny Ashworth, no older than seventeen, and he kept the animal under a green tarpaulin by day. Every evening he walked it along the high street on a chain as thin as a bootlace, and every evening the same thing happened. The women of the Co-op stepped into doorways. The children ran. And the panther, called Sable on the posters, would stop outside the florist's window, lift its black head and stare at the roses in the bucket as though it had lost a bet to them.

Marjorie Greaves kept that florist's. She wore a red rose on her blouse every day of her life, and she told Denny that if he came back on Thursday she would give him one for the beast. He came back. She gave him a big dark-red one with its heart still tight, and he carried it out in his teeth so his hands were free for the chain.

What happened next nobody agrees on. Some say the panther ate the rose. Some say it lay down in the road with the bloom between its paws and wouldn't move until the fair packed up. I'll tell you what I saw from the bakery step: that animal, very slowly, bent its head and laid its muzzle on the petals, the way you'd lean on a sleeping child, and Denny stood there with his mouth open, and nobody in that street said a word for a full minute.